City

Seeing that there are many who cannot live without help from others, and many are content if they can get enough for their own needs, surely those who can maintain their own estate and yet have enough left to adorn the city and relieve their friends may well be thought high and mighty men.

For I would fain honour the gods without counting the cost, Socrates, help friends in need, and look to it that the city lacks no adornment that my means can supply.

I explained that in well-ordered cities the citizens are not satisfied with passing good laws;

First, which do you suppose is likely to bring you more credit, to own a palace adorned with priceless objects of art, or to have the whole city garnished with walls and temples and verandahs and market-places and harbours?

For in my opinion the sums that a great despot spends on the city are more truly necessary expenses than the money he spends on himself.

Account the fatherland your estate, the citizens your comrades, friends your own children, your sons possessions dear as life.

Moreover, the delights of learning something good and excellent, and of studying some of the means whereby a man knows how to regulate his body well and manage his household successfully, to be useful to his friends and city and to defeat his enemies — knowledge that yields not only very great benefits but very great pleasures — these are the delights of the self-controlled;

In financial administration, then, is not the better man he who makes the city wealthier?

Tell me, Euthydemus, he said, do you think that freedom is a noble and splendid possession both for individuals and for communities?